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Premiere: Gayngs, “The Gaudy Side of Town” MP3

A couple issues ago we put Justin Vernon on the cover of our magazine. He was temporarily abandoning the sad sack breakup songs of his Bon Iver project and making weirdo jams with post-rock outfit Collection of Colonies of Bees as Volcano Choir (before you get all mad at us for calling something "post-rock," you should know that this band uses the sound of sharpening knives as percussion). At first we thought dude was just another bearded wilderness enthusiast, but then we asked him for a few albums he was inspired by....annnnd we ended up having to write about perennial dad rock favorites Bill Frisell and Richard Buckner. Exciting times. What we're saying is Vernon's influences range far. But we never would have counted on him to also be unironically into sleazy, ’80s-inspired, hair-pomade-and-neon-signs, we-could-totally-have-sex-to-this-in-the-back-of-a-bowling-alley, clarinet-employing, white dude r&b. But there you have it. Gayngs are releasing Relayted in May on Jagjaguwar. They are a supergroup consisting of Vernon, Ryan Olson, Solid Gold members Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt, and about a billion other contributors. Every song sounds like that husky, breathless point in a sweltering summer evening when you're stuck to the back of your shitty leather car seat and cruising for chicks. Not that that's something we make a habit of—and if we did, we certainly wouldn't be doing it well enough to warrant a song like this as the soundtrack. Also, their promo video is of people having sex, with an anonymous clarinet peaking out of the right side of the frame so slowly. So carefully.